another place very many Fairies were making all sorts of beautiful flowers—blue, and pink, and crimson, every color in the world, and both large and small. Upon trees near by, and spread out upon the rocks also, were numbers of delicate bracelets and brooches and rings and pins, and all manner of beautiful and rare things in gold and gems. So now the Twins knew whence come the bracelets and rings and ornaments of that kind, which so few people have ever seen made.

Over all this scene of beauty there arose sweet music, very peaceful and calm, as though it came from the bottom places of the earth, of which no one knows more than a very little, unless one has been in Fairy-land. All this was so beautiful and strange that the Twins sat 176down and hardly knew what to do. They watched the great ledge of the Mother of Gold heave and swell and sink and rise again, and saw the Fairies making these beautiful things, and saw flitting across the Valley beautiful birds with long tails, as long as one's arm, and with crests as long as one's hand, and with feathers which seemed of gold and pearl and green and blue; and the voices of these birds seemed to them the sweetest they had ever heard.

176

The Fairy Queen allowed them to sit and look as long as they liked, and bade them take up all the pieces of gold and gems and jewels which they liked—all the diamonds and other precious stones. "This, my children," she said, "is where mortals get their gold and precious gems. These come from the Fairy Valley. Here it is that we secure all the gold required by the King whom you have left behind in the Island, and the gems in which the King and his friends delight. But since you have seen this vision of the Mother of Gold, you must not tell even the King where it is, for in that case some of his friends might make war upon us, and we should have to summon from under the earth many of these fierce warriors whose voices you have heard. For all the people who live under the earth fight to the last to conceal this gold from all the rest of the world; and 177that, as you may readily understand, is the reason why gold and jewels are so hard to get, and why they are by many considered so valuable.

177

"Now when you have seen all you wish and when you feel that you will not need to come again—for no one but myself ever twice sees the vision of the Mother of Gold—we will go back and look at other things for a time; but you need not do this until you feel that you will be very happy and contented to do so."

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